John Sandford, author of the best-selling Prey
series, wasn't always John Sandford. He began his career as John Camp, a
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist.

The dual identity began in 1989, when Camp sold two different
novels within months of each other. The first, The
Fool's Run, was written under his real name and featured a
crime-fighting computer hacker [1]. It never took off [2]

But shortly after he sold it, another publisher bid on Rules of Prey, Camp's story about a hard-nosed
Minneapolis detective named Lucas Davenport.

His agent, Esther Newberg, told him that Putnam didn't want to
publish the Prey book under the Camp name, as the novels would be
selling simultaneously. So the author decided to use his middle name instead [3].

And thus he tossed off his old identity and reinvented himself
as Sandford. Such is the price of becoming a hit author.

"It was just a marketing decision," Sandford, 57, told The Post
in a phone interview from his home in Minnesota. "It's like a brand name. I
don't care. My ego is only tied up in how high the name goes on the best-seller
list."

Sandford it as, and Sandford it remained. As each of the
Prey books (the 13th, Mortal Prey,
was just released) steadily worked their way up the charts, becoming hugely
successful.

Over the years, there have been more than a few Camp/Sandford
mix-ups.

"When your airline tickets are reserved under the name John
Sandford, and you show up with an ID that says John Camp, they look at you as
though you're going to hijack the plane," he said.

Once, Sandford managed to talk his way onto a flight because he
had a copy of a Prey novel bearing his picture.

The author's pseudonym has also been the cause of confusion at
hotels, lost faxes and car rental difficulties.

Sandford has handled each of these situations with greater
civility than one might expect of his fictional hero, Davenport, a
straight-shooter who's more comfortable with street justice than prolonged
discussion [4].

Sandford said he first thought of Davenport as a
sociopath.

"He had a problem with women. Even when he was in a
relationship, he'd [have an affair with] some [other] women. But then he
changed, mellowed out. He began to seem like he was searching for
something."

Sandford paused for a moment to reflect. "I want him to have a
happy ending. I don't want him to wind up a bitter, lonely guy."

Davenport may be bitter, but he won't be lonely. The
character's unflagging sense of right and wrong has earned Sandford throngs of
devoted fans.

"I've read every book he's written," said Samantha July, a New
Jersey bookstore manager. "What makes the books so appealing is that Davenport
is human. He takes the crimes personally. That's why he tries so hard to solve
his cases."

Before turning to novels, Sandford won the Pulitzer Prize in
1986 for a series in the St. Paul Pioneer Press about the farm crisis in the
Midwest. He was also a Pulitzer finalist in 1980, for his coverage of Native
American communities in Minnesota and North Dakota.

But by the late 1980s, his childhood dream of being a newspaper
reporter had dimmed.

"I'd been doing it for 20 years. You can only be a reporter for
so long before your brain starts to shrivel up."

So he tried his hand at fiction. He sent a first novel to his
agent, who liked his style but felt the book lacked focus.

"She was right, and it made me realize I had to sit down and
think about the way books are written," he said.

Fans of the Prey series are glad he did.

Footnotes

1. I would have said that he's
actually a criminal-of-sorts, rather than a crime-fighter. Sure, he's stopped
crimes. But they've usually been for selfish or defensive reasons rather than
"because it's the right thing to do". And it's not like Kidd never breaks the
law himself.

2. Well, actually it did take
off, but not until years later, when it was reprinted under the Sandford
name.

3. No, no he didn't. He used his dad's
middle name, which comes from way back in the family tree. I think
that it's his paternal grandmother's maiden name (another article says
maternal grandmother, but then it'd be a heck of a coincidence that
his dad has it as his middle name). In any case, it's not my dad's
middle name. That happens to be "Roswell".

4. I suppose it's true that my dad
handles that kind of mix-up more cooly than Lucas might. But then, Lucas might
shoot someone if he got mad enough, so I don't know if that's really saying
much.

Webmaster @ JohnSandford . org13 August 2018

The Prey series, the Virgil Flowers series,
the Kidd series, The Singular Menace, The Night Crew, Dead
Watch, The Eye and the Heart: The Watercolors of John Stuart Ingle,
and Plastic Surgery: The Kindest Cut are copyrighted by John Sandford.
All excerpts are used with permission.